General Alexander said in his interview with The Australian Financial Review, “We absolutely need to know what Russia’s involvement is with Snowden.” He further said, “I think Snowden is now being manipulated by Russian intelligence. I just don’t know when that exactly started.” At what point did Snowden first come in contact with the Russians? The counterintelligence issue was not if this U.S. intelligence defector in Moscow was under Russian control but when he came under it.
There were three possible time periods when Snowden might have been brought under control by the Russian intelligence service: while he was still working for the NSA; after he arrived in Hong Kong on May 20, 2013; or after he arrived in Russia on June 23, 2013.
The NSA Scenario
The first scenario could stretch as far back as when Snowden was forced out of the CIA in 2009. It will be recalled that the CIA had planned to launch a security investigation of Snowden, but it was aborted when he resigned. He had also incurred large losses speculating in the financial markets in Geneva, which is the kind of activity that had in the past attracted the interest of foreign intelligence services. So it has to be considered in this scenario that Snowden had been recruited by the Russians after he left the CIA and directed to take jobs at civilian contractors servicing the NSA.
Such “career management,” as it is called by the CIA, could explain why Snowden had switched jobs in March 2013 to Booz Allen Hamilton, which, unlike his previous employer, Dell, allowed him to gain proximity to the super-secret lists of the telecommunications systems that the NSA had penetrated in Russia and China. This could account for how he managed to acquire the necessary passwords to accrue privileged information. It could also account for why the documents he copied that pertained to NSA operations in Russia were not among those he gave to Poitras, Greenwald, and other journalists. Because Russia has had an active intelligence-sharing treaty with China since 1996, it could further explain why his first stop was Hong Kong, a part of China. It was a safe venue for debriefing Snowden, as well as establishing his credentials among journalists as a whistle-blower, before a decision was made to allow him to proceed to Russia.
The nearly fatal problem with this early recruitment scenario is Snowden’s contacts with journalists. Snowden, it will be recalled, had contacted Greenwald in December 2012. Greenwald was a high-profile blogger in Brazil who did not use encryption or any security safeguards. Next, he contacted Poitras in January 2013 in Berlin; she was a magnet for NSA dissidents. Both of these contacts put Snowden’s clandestine downloading at grave risk. As known opponents of U.S. intelligence agencies, these journalists might be, as they themselves suspected they were, under surveillance by American, British, Brazilian, or German intelligence services. Greenwald and Poitras might also tell others who were either under surveillance or informers. So no matter what precautions Snowden took, his secret enterprise, or just the fact he was in contact with anti-government activists, might be detected. At minimum, he could lose his access to secrets and be of no further use as a source at the NSA. He could also be interrogated and reveal the way he was brought under control. If Snowden had actually been under the control of the Russian intelligence service, the last thing it would allow was for him to take such a risk—or even to contact a single journalist. After all, the purpose of an espionage operation is to steal secrets without alerting anyone to the theft.
A former CIA officer told me that while anything could “go haywire” in an intelligence operation, it would be “unthinkable” that the Russian intelligence service would permit an undercover source it controlled in the NSA to expose himself by contacting journalists. Snowden’s continued interactions with Poitras and Greenwald make it implausible that he was under Russian control before he went to Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong Scenario
The most compelling support for the scenario that Snowden was brought under Russian control while he was in Hong Kong comes, it will be recalled, from Vladimir Putin. His disclosure about the case leaves little doubt that Russian officials had engaged Snowden in Hong Kong, that Putin had authorized his trip to Moscow, and that the Russian government allowed him to fly to Moscow without a Russian visa. We know that Putin’s version is supported by U.S. surveillance of Snowden’s activities in Hong Kong. We also know that the Russians went to some lengths not only to facilitate his trip to Moscow but to arrange to keep him in Russia. This supports the possibility that the Russian intelligence service managed to bring Snowden under its sway during his thirty-four days in Hong Kong.
The Russian intelligence service might even have been aware of Snowden and his anti-NSA activities before his arrival on May 20. Snowden was anything but discreet in his contacts with strangers in the anti-surveillance movement, including such well-known activists as Runa Sandvik (to whom he revealed his true name and address via e-mail), Micah Lee, Jacob Appelbaum, Parker Higgins, and Laura Poitras. “It is not statistically improbable that members of this circle were being watched by a hostile service,” a former NSA counterintelligence officer told me in 2015. When I told him that Poitras and others in her circle had used PGP encryption, aliases, and Tor software in their exchanges with Snowden, he said, arching his eyebrows, “That might work against amateurs, but it wouldn’t stop the Russians if they thought they might have a defector in the NSA.” He explained that both the NSA and hostile services have the “means” to bypass such safeguards.
I asked what the Russian intelligence service would have done if it had indeed spotted Snowden in late 2012 or early 2013. “Maybe just research him,” he replied. As we know now, he pointed out, Russia and China probably had access to the 127-page standard form in his personnel file that he updated in 2011. They also had the capability to track his air travel to Hong Kong. “Could someone have steered him to Hong Kong?” I asked. He answered, with a shrug, “That depends on whether Snowden had a confidante who could have influenced him.”
Whenever adversaries became aware of Snowden in this scenario, it was not until after he copied the NSA secrets and took them with him to Hong Kong that Russian intelligence officers offered him a deal. So from the Russian point of view, Snowden had already burned his bridges. Because he had used other people’s passwords and access privileges to get into computers that he was not authorized to use, illegally moved documents, and given a false reason for his medical leave, it was only a matter of time, as he told Greenwald in his interview in Hong Kong, before NSA investigators would identify him as a possible spy. He could be of no further use at the NSA to an adversary. His intelligence value now lay in the documents he had taken with him or stored in the cloud as well as his ability to help clarify them in debriefing sessions. He could also inflict damage on the morale and public standing of the NSA by denouncing its spying in the media.
Once Snowden was in Hong Kong, the Russians would have no reason to restrain him from holding a press event or releasing a video. In fact, the KGB had organized press conferences for all the previous NSA defectors to Moscow. Hong Kong was a perfect venue for a well-staged media event because all the major newspapers in the world had bureaus there. Snowden’s disclosures about NSA spying could serve to weaken the NSA’s relations with its allies.
It is also possible that Russian or Chinese intelligence did not become aware of Snowden until after he went public in June by having The Guardian release his video. The video would have convinced the Russians or the Chinese of how dissatisfied Snowden was with the NSA. Because dissatisfaction is one of the classic means of recruitment in the intelligence business, he would certainly become a prime target for recruitment after he went public.
The CIA also considered the possibility that Snowden might have been reeled in unwittingly. Morell suggested in his book that Snowden might not himself have fully realized “when and how he would be used.”
It can be safely assumed that the decision made by Putin’s intelligence service to allow Snowden to travel to Russia proceeded from something other than softhearted sentiment about his
welfare. After Putin learned that there was an American in Hong Kong from the “special services” seeking to come to Russia, he also learned from Snowden’s own disclosure on the video released that Snowden had taken a large number of NSA documents to Hong Kong: indeed, some were shown on the video. After that self-outing by Snowden, Putin had plenty of time to calculate the advantages and disadvantages of allowing him to come to Moscow.
Putin could offer him not only freedom from arrest but also a platform to express his views. The exploitation of an intelligence defector, even after he yields his secrets, can be the final stage of a successful intelligence operation. The CIA considered one of its greatest coups of the Cold War its release of the espionage-acquired secret speech of Nikita Khrushchev to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 exposing the transgressions of the previous regime of Joseph Stalin. Making public these deeds was meant by the CIA to sow discord both inside the Soviet Union and to disrupt its relations with its allies. General Alexander suggested that Putin might similarly be “looking to capitalize on the fact that [Snowden’s] actions are enormously disruptive and damaging to US interests.” This potential gain, if Alexander’s assessment is correct, provided Putin with an additional reason to have his representatives in Hong Kong offer Snowden exfiltration.
Snowden was in no position to refuse. After the release of the video, there was no going back to America without his facing a determined criminal prosecution. He would have known that in almost every prior case intelligence workers who had intentionally released even a single classified document had gone to prison. As his Internet postings show, he had closely followed the ordeal of Bradley Manning, whose trial was coming to its conclusion while Snowden was in Hong Kong. Manning had been kept in solitary confinement under horrific conditions for over a year while awaiting his trial and was facing a long prison sentence. There was no reason for Snowden to expect a better outcome for himself if he returned to the United States or was arrested anywhere else that had an extradition treaty with the United States. As the Russian officials in Hong Kong would have informed him, Russia had no extradition treaty with the United States. It was also one of the few places in the world that he could reach from Hong Kong without flying through airspace in which he might be intercepted by a U.S. ally. Snowden was told he could take the direct Aeroflot flight to Moscow without a valid passport or visa.
That Snowden’s alternative to going to Russia was going to prison gave the Russians considerable leverage in Hong Kong. The Russian “diplomats” could have used this leverage to extract a quid pro quo. The price of admission might have meant putting himself in the hands of Russian intelligence and telling it all he knew.
The Moscow Scenario
The final possibility is that Snowden did not come under Russian control until after he arrived in Moscow. After assessing the negative attitude that Snowden expressed toward government authority on the video that was released by The Guardian, the Russian “diplomats” in Hong Kong might have concluded that Snowden could bolt if too much pressure was exerted on him there. The Russians could afford to be patient. They knew that Interpol and the United States would be pursuing Snowden throughout the world and that he had no valid travel documents and that his credit cards had been frozen. They would likely know that Sarah Harrison had arranged his flight to Moscow on June 23. So they had no urgent need to apply pressure on him before his plane landed in Russia.
After the Russians took him in a “special operation” from the plane at the airport, he was informed by Russian authorities that he would not be allowed to go to Cuba, Venezuela, Iceland, Ecuador, or any other country without the permission of Russian officials, which would not be immediately forthcoming. He was now at the mercy of the Russian authorities. There was good reason for keeping him in a virtual prison in Russia. “He can compromise thousands of intelligence and military officials,” Sergei Alexandrovich Markov, the co-chairman of the National Strategic Council of Russia and an adviser to Putin, pointed out. “We can’t send him back just because America demands it.”
So Snowden was consigned to the transit zone of the airport, which is a twilight zone neither inside nor outside Russia, a netherworld that extends beyond the confines of the airport to include safe houses and other facilities maintained by the FSB for the purposes of interrogation and security. Stranded at the Moscow airport, no matter what he had believed earlier in Hong Kong, Snowden would quickly realize that he had only one viable option: seeking protection in Russia.
Even though the FSB is known by U.S. intelligence to strictly control the movements and contacts of former members of foreign intelligence services in Russia, Snowden might not have realized the full extent of the FSB’s interest in him. He naively told The Washington Post in December 2013, in Moscow, “I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.” Whatever he might have been thinking, a former U.S. communications intelligence worker who stole American state secrets, such as Snowden, would be under the FSB’s scrutiny.
Andrei Soldatov, the co-author of the 2010 book The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB, who was personally knowledgeable about FSB procedures, explained the FSB would monitor “every facet of Snowden’s communications, and his life.” General Oleg Kalugin, who, as previously mentioned, defected from the KGB to the United States in 1995, added that the FSB (following the standard operating procedures of the KGB) would be “his hosts and they are taking care of him.” Kalugin further said in 2014, “Whatever he had access to in his former days at NSA, I believe he shared all of it with the Russians, and they are very grateful.” This assessment was backed by Frants Klintsevich. As the first deputy chairman of the Kremlin’s defense and security committee at the time of Snowden’s defection, he was in a position to know Snowden’s contribution. “Let’s be frank,” he said in a taped interview with NPR (in Russian), “Snowden did share intelligence. This is what security services do. If there’s a possibility to get information, they will get it.”
Even without Klintsevich’s comments, top American intelligence officers had little doubt that the Russian security services would do their job. Michael Hayden, for example, who in succession headed three American intelligence services, was certainly in a position to appreciate the capabilities of the Russian and Chinese intelligence services. He told me in 2014 that he saw no other possibility than that Snowden would be induced to cooperate in this situation, saying, “I would lose all respect for the Russian and Chinese security services if they haven’t fully exploited everything Snowden had to give.” They certainly had that opportunity when Snowden spent almost six weeks at Sheremetyevo International Airport. The FSB controlled his access to food, lodgings, the Internet, and whatever else he needed to survive there. If he did not cooperate, the FSB could also return him to the United States, where in the eyes of the Department of Justice he had betrayed the United States by stealing secrets and taking them abroad. What recourse did Snowden have? In a word, the FSB held all the cards but one—Snowden’s help with the stolen documents. Even if Snowden disliked the tactics of the Russian security services, he now had a powerful inducement not to decline the requests of the Russian authorities.
Two weeks after his arrival, the Russian authorities provided him with a convenient path to full cooperation with Russia. He was put in contact with Anatoly Grigorievich Kucherena, a silver-haired, fifty-two-year-old lawyer who is known to be a personal friend of Putin’s. Kucherena did tasks for Putin’s party in the Russian parliament, or Duma. He had excellent connections in the Russian security apparatus because he served on the oversight committee of the FSB. Kucherena offered to serve as Snowden’s pro bono lawyer. On July 12, Snowden officially retained him as his legal representative in Moscow. In explaining the relationship, Kucherena said, “Officially, he is my client, but at the same time, I provide a number of other services to him.” According to Kucherena, Snowden turned down all requests to meet with
any representative of the U.S. embassy in Moscow. From that point on, he would act as Snowden’s go-between with the FSB and other Russian agencies.
At the outset, Kucherena made it clear to Snowden that he would have to play by Moscow’s rules before the Kremlin would grant him permission to stay in Russia. To begin with, Snowden had to withdraw any applications he had made elsewhere for asylum. He had to put his fate entirely in the hands of Putin’s Russia. He would also have to be fully candid with the Russian authorities on what was of great value to Putin: the secret documents he had acquired.
Eighteen days later, Snowden received Russian identification papers that allowed him to resettle in Moscow. He was provided with a residence and allowed to set up a broadcasting studio in it that he could use for Internet appearances at well-attended events around the world, such as South by Southwest and TED. Snowden was, according to Kucherena, also furnished with bodyguards. To help earn his keep, he was said by Kucherena to be employed at an unidentified Moscow cyber-security firm. To complete his resettlement, Lindsay Mills, whom he had left behind in Hawaii, was given a three-month visa and was allowed to temporarily live with him in Moscow. This afforded him a lifestyle that Snowden described in an interview as “great.”
How America Lost Its Secrets Page 18
